Two Tachihara 45GF cameras with pinholed bellows made light tight. Running 3M #850 1" wide black bellows repair tape down the length of all four corners of fully stretched bellows did the trick. Re-pleating the bellows is easy but tedious. Should be good for another 20 years!

Photography, the word itself, invented and defined by its author Sir John.F.W.Herschel, 14 March 1839 at the Royal Society, Somerset House, London. Quote "...Photography or the application of the Chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation,..". unquote.

Took the F-stop scale off a 1950's Compur shutter as the numbers were difficult to see. Soaked the old paint off in thinners and cleaned out the crud in the engraved lines & numbers. Wiped some white enamel paint over to fill in the afore mentioned lines and numbers and left to dry. After giving the scale a quick rub down with very fine wet & dry, it got a 30 second dunk in KRST. Having giving it a thorough wash and left to dry, the KRST has turned the brass a satin black which sets off the white numbers quite nicely - Could probably do with a further treatment in KRST and a thin coat of lacquer..

The "how many enlargers" thread got me thinking about my Saunders 7600 LPL with uncooperative Dichro knobs. It wasn't a big deal to open up the housing and free the mechanism, but I was struck by how improbably and needlessly tiny the machine screws that hold the lamp housing on are.

I also replaced the lamp I burned out the other day with my last ESJ. (and then I put the dead bulb back with his brothers in the "Lazarus" box... If I don't have a miracle soon, I'm going to have to buy some more.)

Tom, on Point Pelee, Canada

Ansel Adams had the Zone System... I'm working on the points system. First I points it here, and then I points it there...

Picked up another SRT-101 from a random eBay seller, camera arrived with frozen shutter. Luckily I had another SRT-101 from which to make mechanical comparisons and finally figured out that it was somehow all related to the self-timer. Opened up the back, found the battery compartment had corrosion, etc. that had somehow leaked over to the self-timer shaft. Loosened the shaft with a screwdriver and heard the self-timer starting to close... faster... ca-click.. clunk... Fixed.

Stop worrying about grain, resolution, sharpness, and everything else that doesn't have a damn thing to do with substance.

Not sure I would call it fixing, but I just did an Ai-ectomy (or would that be Non-Ai-ectomy?) to a Nikkor 55mm f3.5 macro lens. I finally found my fixture for holding the aperture ring, so that saved a lot of time, didn't have to remake that. Slapped it on the rotary table and knocked off about .068 and eyeballed the edge 1/3 of the way between f16 and f22. Lens meters closely with others on my F3 and now I can fit it on a D3100 to hopefully try d!qit1zing a huge collection of old family slides quickly (so tired of scanning at a snails pace). Now I'm set and practiced up to modify a Nikkor-S 50mm f1.4 that's still on it's way in the mail.